Artist: Fozzy
Album: Chasing The Grail
Genre: Heavy Metal
Label: None

The story has been told 1000 times in the last 20 years. Person becomes celebrity for something other than singing and decides to release an album. For some, like Jared Leto and 30 Seconds to Mars, it works. For others, like comedian Eddie Murphy or actor Bruce Willis, they become blemishes on a somewhat shining career. For Chris Jericho, the segway from professional wrestler to lead singer in a heavy metal rock band was actually quite successful. For over 10 years now, Fozzy, the band Jericho fronts, have been touring, recording, and trying to save the once great world of heavy metal. Unfortunately, their new album Chasing The Grail comes across as more of a death rattle than battle cry.

Over the course of too many tracks to list by name, Fozzy bumbles through what most would consider the groundwork of a great heavy metal band. Simple chord progressions mixed with average vocals and too many echo/reverb effects basically summarizes the entire record without ruining the mental image of the great contender and idol Jericho once was.

What’s even more depressing? Their last record came out in 2005. 2005! The whole UTG staff was in high school [some of us have now graduated college] and in that time you couldn’t even pick up a “Playing Medium Difficulty Guitar for Dummies” book or something? Seriously, you know these guys are funded by the escapades of Jericho on stage and the various full time projects of the other band members, but it all seems like an ultimately wasteful attempt at failed rock grandeur.

The only grail Fozzy is chasing on this record is mediocrity and it’s a valient, but failed effort through and through. Chris Jericho needs to stay in the league of onesies wearing buff actors and the other members need to go back to their much more respected acts and pray no one else ever has to endure another effort by this crashed and burned project again.

Score: 2/10
Review written by: James Shotwell

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James Shotwell

James Shotwell is the founder of Under The Gun Review. He loves writing about music and movies almost as much as he loves his two fat cats. He's also the co-founder of Antique Records and the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. You should probably follow him on Twitter.

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